STATE HOUSE ROUNDUP -- Trying to show proper table manners

Monday

Jun 11, 2018 at 9:30 AMJun 11, 2018 at 12:42 PM

A recap and analysis of the week in state government.

When you throw a dinner party, the guests usually expect to get fed.

So it made some sense last week when House and Senate leaders set their sights on finishing a more than $470 million incentive package for the life science industry as Boston threw open its doors to 16,000 guests from more than 70 countries, all in town for the 2018 BIO International Conference.

But while the menu looked delicious, the culinary execution left something to be desired. While legislators were busy in the kitchen preparing the main course, Gov. Charlie Baker showed up to the conference with appetizers -- $20 million in grants to 23 companies that the governor said would create more than 1,000 jobs this year.

Baker called the grants "our way of saying we appreciate the work that's done by this industry," but a year after he filed legislation to extend the state's 10-year, $1 billion life sciences initiative by five years, he wasn't able to showcase the real prize.

Instead, the Legislature was back on Beacon Hill appearing put a rush on the dinner order, but unable to plate the food until after the BIO guests had gotten up from the table.

If Democrats, coming off their annual convention in Worcester, wanted to send a message to Baker that they weren't going to deliver him a win by gifting him the life sciences bill to crow about on the international stage at the BIO Convention, then why put a rush on the bill at all?

Or, if muscle-flexing wasn't the objective, why didn't the bill reach the governor's desk until the afternoon that janitors had begun sweeping up the debris left at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center after four days of festivities?

Regardless of the politics, Baker and the Legislature (pending the governor's signature) have teamed up to provide another major cash infusion to an industry that, according the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center, has surpassed New Jersey as the East Coast behemoth for life science jobs, behind only California.

Some Democrats think it's a mistake to keep subsidizing an industry that draws venture capital and should be able to sustain itself, but as the bids to lure General Electric and Amazon have shown, competition among states means constantly trying to keep up with the Joneses.

The Legislature, actually, has been in a spending mood of late. Over the past couple of weeks, the House and Senate have approved more than $6 billion in long-term borrowing to extend housing development programs, grow biotechnology jobs and repair and replace critical capital assets around the state.

In addition to the life sciences bill, the legislature finished work on a $3.87 billion capital needs borrowing bill.

At the federal level, U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren said last week the government should be spending more money to build infrastructure, improve education, fight opioid addiction and expand access to health care. And government could afford to do that, Warren said, if it reversed President Donald Trump's tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy.

Furthermore, Warren said opposition to the GOP tax package, which Republicans have credited with jolting the economy to the benefit all Americans, not just the wealthy, will be a winning issue for Democrats in the midterms.

Another winning issue, according to the latest state polling, is a cut to the state's 6.25 percent sales tax. The last MassINC/WBUR poll had nearly 70 percent of voters in favor of slashing the sales tax rate to 5 percent.

The potential loss of $1.2 billion in revenue, however, would likely prove to be a massive headache for Beacon Hill Democrats often looking for ways to spend more on services, not less. That's why leaders in the State House have been holding out hope for what Baker has termed the "grand bargain" to keep the Retailers Association of Massachusetts from moving forward with its sales tax question, and also keep a $4 minimum wage increase to $15 off the ballot.

Some insight into those secret talks, however, emerged last week when the Raise Up coalition wrote to House Speaker Robert DeLeo and Senate President Harriette Chandler telling them that their efforts to strike a deal with RAM were at a "standstill."

The issue, according to Raise Up, is that RAM President Jon Hurst is insisting that any compromise include a sub-minimum wage for teen workers and a repeal of the Sunday time-and-a-half wage law. Hurst would not confirm or deny that he is seeking both those concessions as a condition of dropping his ballot question, but said that if a deal can't be reached RAM is prepared to win at the ballot box.

Meanwhile, the lawmakers leading the negotiating effort -- Labor Committee Chairmen Rep. Paul Brodeur and Sen. Jason Lewis -- told both sides to keep at it. There is after all, 3 1/2 weeks left before ballot campaigns must turn in their final round of signatures, and a lot can change in that time.

The single, most-unpredictable knuckleball that could be thrown at negotiators is a decision from the Supreme Judicial Court over whether a ballot question that would amend the constitution to impose a surtax on millionaires can proceed.

The court heard arguments in the case brought by business groups challenging the legality of the question in February, and as the calendar has turned to June, Beacon Hill is holding a daily morning vigil to see if the decision might be released.

Speaking of released, the furor over the pending release of convicted child rapist Wayne Chapman from civil detention got sated a bit last week when State Police and Department of Correction officers arrested Chapman ahead of his release date for exposing himself to nurses.

That might be enough to keep Chapman behind bars, but Baker filed a bill last week that would impose mandatory life without parole sentences on any convicted sex offender who abused more than one child.

DeLeo and House Judiciary Committee Chairwoman Claire Cronin, who just finished a major criminal justice bill and confronted the issues associated with mandatory minimum sentences, said the governor's bill will get a close look.

The Senate last week also voted to pass a revised version of the "red flag" gun bill that has already cleared the House, putting the concept of an extreme risk protection order to temporarily take guns away from owners considered a danger to themselves or other one step closer to reaching Baker's desk.